Digitization of music and images has democratized content creation, distribution and the way content is shared. Before digitization, only select individuals with access to expensive and cumbersome equipment were able to manipulate media. For example, it was rare for anyone besides a record producer to be able to construct a musical composition out of various vocals and instruments into a desired arrangement. Since a record producer was usually hired by an artist or a record company, the record producer's creation was not owned by him and thus, he was precluded from distributing his creative output. Any attempts at record producing by using readily available equipment such a cassette recorders yielded poor quality.
Digitization has condensed media so that physical manipulation and display of media is no longer required. This means that a significantly greater number of individuals are able to create their own content (or manipulate existing content) and easily share this creation with other individuals using media or multimedia mixers.
However, despite the ease with which individuals can become their own producers or photographers, current media or multimedia mixers are nonetheless inefficient and limiting. For example, traditional audio-video mixers are primarily burdensome. Having separate auxiliary equipment provides additional equipment to handle and care for. Furthermore set-up of media output with a mixer (e.g. for performance) is time consuming, and additional equipment means additional controllers to regulate. Moreover, having an external physical mixer limits the types of features that such can explored in multimedia mixing. For example, traditional mixers may have a finite number of built-in audio and video effects for the treatment of media content.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and method that improves the combining and mixing of media by offering a streamlined system for the creation, recordation, and distribution of multimedia content. This and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.